Alternative spellings

• theater
• The spelling theatre is the main spelling in Commonwealth English, with theater being rare.
• In United States English, theater accounts for about 80 percent of usage in the major corpus of usage, COCA.

Noun

Singular theatre

Plural theatres

theatre (plural theatres)

1. A place or building, consisting of a stage and seating, in which an audience gathers to watch plays, musical performances, public ceremonies etc.

   "The theatre is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, it is also the return of art to life." — (w:Oscar Wilde)

2. A region where a particular action takes place; a specific field of action, usually with reference to war.

   His grandfather was in the Pacific theatre during the war.

3. A lecture theatre.
4. (medicine) An operating theatre.

   This man is about to die, get him into theatre at once!

5. (US, Australian, New Zealand) A cinema, or picture theatre.

   We sat in the back row of the theatre and threw popcorn at the screen.

6. Drama or performance as a profession or artform.

   I worked in the theatre for twenty-five years.

7. (US) A drama theater (to distinguish from the cinema theater)

Theatre (or theater, see spelling differences) is the branch of the performing arts defined by Bernard Beckerman as what "occurs when one or more persons, isolated in time and/or space, present themselves to another or others." By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of human tendency for storytelling. Since its inception, theatre has come to take on many forms, utilizing speech, gesture, music, dance, and spectacle, combining the other performing arts, often as well as the visual arts, into a single artistic form.

The word derives from the Ancient Greek theatron (θέατρον) meaning, "the seeing place."

Theatre (Greek "theatron"), enjoys the distinction of two spellings: in British English, "theatre" and in American English, "theater". There is no technical distinction between the meanings of the two spellings, however most theatre artists prefer the English spelling because it creates a historical nod to the ancient Greek term theatron. Some also use the American spelling to designate a theatre building and the English term to reference the art itself, as in the "art of theatre." Theatre is that branch of the performing arts concerned with the creation of stories or narratives for (or with) an audience using combinations of acting, speech, gesture, music, dance, object manipulation, sound and spectacle — indeed, any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, musicals, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera, mummers' plays, and pantomime.